6.5/10, not recommended, try The Maze Runner instead of this. ( )

This is GONE and The RAIN put together. In the future rain is poisonous and causes you to die if you drink it. In the future you only live to 19. In the future, you are married at 15 and if you are lucky, you can have a healthy baby human; a norm. If not, you will give birth to a genetically modified human - a variant. Esther is a human. She is 15 and she rebels against the rules of her town Prin. She does not want to forage for petrol, nor dig for underground water - instead she wants to play with her variant/mutant friend Skar and feed Joseph, a loner on the outskirts of Prin who lives with 10 cats in an old hotel. She does not care for Levi and his plans of dominating the town, nor Rafe the "town leader" who's main job seems to be to kowtow to Levi. She also argues profusely with her older sister Sarah who wants her to tow the town line.
Then, into Prin comes Caleb - a man who has had his wife killed and his son kidnapped by variants - and Esther falls instantly in love with him!
This is a great story with lots of characters and twists and turns. My only criticism is that we don't hear more about what the variants are thinking - especially Esther's friend Skar. I loved how the power game was played out amongst Levi and Caleb and Rafe and the leader of the variants. A great book for fans of Gone and the Joseph twist (SPOILER ALERT : He has worked out he is 26 years old when everyone else dies at 19 is fascinating!) Can't wait for the next one. ( )

This book has a lot of action throughout it and there were a lot of twists to it. It also had many questions that needed to be answered. 4Q4P The cover art is okay and I'd recommend this to high school students and adults. I chose to read this book because I read the description and thought it sounded good. WilliamH

This is a guarded 4 stars for middle school aged readers only. This book is about a future world in which no one lives beyond the age of 20ish for health reasons that are not fully explained. This book is trying to be a teen version of Mad Max or The Road in which the kids must forage to survive. One kid controls a large cache of supplies and everyone is dependent on him. The most valuable commodity is gasoline which never apparently gets stale in this world. So there is a lot of siphoning going on. There is no one who says "Do you think we should grow things for the future/" There are your two obligatory "rebels" who meet and fall in love but nothing too graphic. Why 4 stars? Well the book reads easily and is fast paced if you don't read it with a critical mind would probably be enjoyable. It is the first of a three part series. ( )